Belarus police briefly detain two reporters at a rally

Police
in Minsk on April 26, 2013, detained for three days two reporters for the
Poland-based Radio Racyja, according to the local press. The
journalists, Gennady Barbarich and Aleksandr Yaroshevich, were taken into
police custody on disobedience charges after reporting
on a state-authorized rally, called Chernobylskiy Shlyakh, in commemoration of
the April 1986 nuclear plant explosion in Chernobyl.

A
district court on April 29, 2013, sentenced the journalists
to three days in jail, and they were released because they had already served
the term, news reports said,

The
independent news website Naviny reported that the journalists were
detained while headed to the Radio Racyja newsroom after the rally. The
officers asked the journalists for their IDs then said Barbarich looked like a
wanted criminal and ordered them to come to a local police department. The
journalists were then transferred to a detention facility, the Minsk-based
press freedom group Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reported.

Police
briefly detained two other journalists on the same day, BAJ reported. Oksana
Rudovich and Irina Arekhovskaya, reporters for the independent newspaper Nasha Niva, were taken to a local police
department after reporting on the Chernobyl rally, and held for about an hour.